In yesterday’s post, I highlighted some of the different types, or categories, of karma coming to the conclusion that the one most active in my present incarnation has to do with communication – i.e. either being too vocal or not vocal enough in prior lives combined with the likelihood of difficulties with being properly understood.
Karmic Houses
Although each of the 12 houses in the natal chart offer clues about one’s current karmic challenges, the most likely culprits are the 4th, 8th, and 12th houses (the water houses). It is thus no surprise that, as concluded yesterday, my Saturn/Neptune/Mercury conjunction in Libra in my 4th house, summed up as the mystical/pragmatist dilemma, plays a huge part in my life. More on that later. In the meantime, with communication karma highlighted, it’s useful to first turn to my 3rd house, which rules not only communication/learning but also siblings.
In my 3rd house, I have a close Venus/Mar conjunction in Virgo (a Mercury ruled zodiac sign). This brings up two tracks or avenues of investigation, the first of which suggests that having Mars in the 3rd house, in past lives I may have had intense rivalry with a sibling. Given that in my present life I’m an only child, and nothing of this nature has come up in past life regressions or similar work, let’s move on to the fact that my Mars is is conjunct Venus: this is ‘love hurts’ – well that make sense. Both Mars/Venus make a difficult square aspect to my Moon in Gemini, which because that is found in my 12th house, suggests this may be the root of my 3rd house karma.
The Moon
In karmic astrology, the Moon represents deeply engrained unconscious behaviour and emotional patterns from the past, patterns that are buried so keep that often they feel so familiar, so safe and comfortable, they are on constant auto pilot. The Moon also symbolises what we expect to happen on an emotional level whenever presented with mothering/nurturing issues.
| Moon in Sign | Past Patterns | Karmic Challenges |
|---|---|---|
| Aries | Selfishness / need for instant gratification. | Find ways to get own emotional needs met whilst at same time ensuring those of all involved are likewise met. |
| Taurus | Overwhelming need to maintain emotional security usually at the expense of feeling trapped and harbouring deep resentment. | Deep soul level communication with partner and developing ability to reframe promises and commitments when necessary which sometimes requires complete letting go. |
| Gemini | Learned to discuss and intellectualise feelings rather than allowing oneself to feel emotions | Develop ability to consciously express and communicate emotions without feeling overwhelmed or anxious. |
| Cancer | Deep-seated anxiety of letting go and so clings to the past whether painful or not. | Needs to cut ties with emotional expectations of ‘ought’ and ‘should’ whilst at same time developing ability to be nurturing to other without smothering them. |
| Leo | Being autocratic and overbearing, prideful with self-inflated importance. | Learn humility whilst at the same time being valued for the unique gifts offered to others. |
| Virgo | Cold, critical, and over analytical – uncomfortable with emotions – tends to be celibate at last in regards to allowing others to get close. | Develop ways to be of true service to others whilst at the same time keeping one’s self whole and intact. |
| Libra | People pleaser and co-dependence. Avoids confrontation at all costs and so stifles own emotional needs. | Develop inner emotional equilibrium which in turn enable honesty in expressing one’s feelings. |
| Scorpio | Deeply mistrustful and harbours old jealousies , anger, pain and passion. Gain power over others before they can gain power over you. | Develop ability to access deep hidden strengths to allow self and to assist others to deal with the inevitable darkness in their lives. |
| Sagittarius | ‘Out to lunch’ whenever emotional demands made by others. Like Gemini, prefers to intellectualise feelings rather than experience them. | Develop ways to share true feelings with other s without being tackless or brutally honest – develop finesse that encourages feelings of joy rather than shutting down. |
| Capricorn | Cold, judgemental ,and afraid to express emotions. Instead sends out message of self-sufficiency and ‘approach with caution’. | Develop ways of being authoritative and responsible whilst offering support to others. Take the mature and self-controlled road. |
| Aquarius | Appears emotional independent but often feels hopelessly isolated – avoids close one-to-one-relationships, preferring instead to exercise concern over mankind as a whole. | Stay in contact with higher self and attune one’s actions to deeply embraced spiritual goals. |
| Pisces | Open to emotional abuse and martyrdom and takes refuge in the illusion of the virtuous victim. | Develop channels for sharing unconditional love without taking on the burdens of others. |
With the Moon in Gemini, I’ve learned to discuss and intellectualise my feelings rather than to allow myself to feel them. In such circumstances, it is difficult for me to achieve honest intimacy even with close others. It’s all too easy for me to rationalize away any feelings that do slip through the net. This leaves me both open to emotional manipulation by others as well as being the perpetrator of emotional manipulation on others. My expects are that others – especially mother and similar mother-figures will try to emotionally manipulate me and so I protect extra hard against that. Believe me when I say that when I was undergoing psychological counselling (a requirement for a course I was taking), that me and my therapist spent 3 years talking about my mother and from I gathered, we’d not even touched the tip of the iceberg.
My Moon in Gemini is in my 12th house, the most karmic of all the houses. This suggests that lack of emotional intimacy is something coming long down my maternal line: this is borne out by my own mother’s Moon in Aquarius (even more emotionally detached than Gemini) and her mother’s Moon in Virgo (tendency to prudishness and being critical).
This suggests that my karmic communication issues likely from feeling as if I will – and never can be – be heard regarding my own wishes and desires and worse, finding a way to rationalise that away even when I know at some level, it’s neither helpful nor appropriate and quite honestly, of my own (unconscious making).
Example
Whilst on that retreat at Glastonbury Abbey back in 2002 with Judy Hall and my fellow would-be karmic astrologer, we did a number of exercises and visualisations and not surprisingly, my mother (who was still alive at the time) showed in several:
- Askatic Records Meditation – when I asked the librarian for the volumes dealing with my life and lives, I was given three rather uninteresting volumes. When I asked if there were more, I was told there was a volume 4 and that was ‘out’ and not available. I argued that no one else had the right to access my volume to accept me but the librarian was adamant and snotty. I argued with her some more and got tossed out the library. To get back, I was forced to apologise and bow down to the librarian. Finally, in fit of nasty mischievousness, that librarian showed me that she really was my mother and that she still had volume of my life under the front desk and that she wasn’t going to give it to me. I was forced to leave the library yet again, empty-handed and angry.
- Vow Releasing and tie-cutting ceremony – during this ritual, my mother shot arrows at me and was nasty. We were separated by a stream (the Atlantic Ocean, no doubt, as already I was living in the UK and my mother was in the US) over which there was a bridge. The bridge was cracking in the middle. I tried to hold it together with glue. The bridge did not want to cooperate. Was I trying to hold it together out of a sense of guilt or some real desire to do so? Relations between my mother and I had already started to break down in real time. After the ties were cut, in final part of that ceremony, I became the woman in the tarot card the Nine of Coins. I’d always loved this card. She is standing in a lush with a falcon on her arm, raw instinct ready for use but well-under control. This woman was self-assured and comfortable in her ability to take care of herself. This was image of wholeness that I brought back with me from the ceremony.
- Karmic astrologer meditation – in this meditation my guide told me that although it seems like my mother had hijacked my life, in reality it was only my moon in Gemini in my 12th house. My Jupiter, also in my 12th house was still mine and she could never get that. The upshot is that when I do my Jupiter in Gemini in my 12th house (to be explored later), I was doing my own thing and was my own person, far away from the clutches of my mother.
So where does all this leave me with my the challenges of my communication karma? For starters, having part of my voice -my own story – hijacked by my mother is part of it. But of course, there’s more to come. Next, I’ll explore my 12th house Jupiter in Gemini, tying neatly as it does ( by trine) to my Mercury/Neptune/Saturn conjunction (i.e. mystical/pragmatist dilemma) in my deeply karmic 4th house. Other karmic factors are also implicated.
(to be continued)
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